If I may elbow my way into this discussion, my reading has never revealed an indisputable rejection by VN of the theory that either Shade or Kinbote may have invented the other. I hope this will help coax Dmitri to make “an interesting comment” about the book that I consider one of the highest achievements of the novelists’ art in the distinct and original category ( that I have invented) of 20th century American English.
Andrew Stuart
On 8/27/06 8:55 AM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
Subject:
RE: [NABOKV-L] FW: Why hide?
From:
"Dmitri Nabokov"
Date:
Sun, 27 Aug 2006 06:51:05 +0200
To:
"'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
A comment for Carolyn, Jansy, et al.:
Unfortunately I must mercilessly budget my time and can participate only passively in the current lively and variegated discourse about the many facets of Pale Fire. In the first paragraph of the letter below, we read "The idea that Shade or Kinbote is the inventor of the other is another theory entirely, a theory that Nabokov himself ridiculed." This notion is expressed in an authoritative tone, as if it were a previously established given in need of no further discussion. Can we really be so sure? Where does Nabokov conclusively affirm it? If one enlightened me in this regard, I think I could make an interesting comment.
Greetings,
DN
-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Carolyn Kunin
Sent: samedi, 26. août 2006 21:47
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] FW: Why hide?
Jansy asks "why did Kinbote have to hide away the cards with the poem," and wonders when Kinbote became an invention of Shade's.
Dear Jansy,
My theory is that Pale Fire is Nabokov's re-invention of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and that Kinbote and Gradus are suppressed alternate personalities of John Shade who are able to take over his consciousness following the stroke described in the fourth canto. The idea that Shade or Kinbote is the inventor of the other is another theory entirely, a theory that Nabokov himself ridiculed.
The insane John Shade ("Kinbote") has to hide the poem because Sybil and several professors want to get it away from him, fearing what he might do with it.
After Shade's personality is "killed" and the alternate personality of Kinbote emerges, to his wife and colleagues it seems that Shade has gone completely mad. He is hospitalized for a while, but manages to escape. All this Kinbote narrates as if he were the King of Zembla escaping a revolution.
This explains the chronology problem that you mentioned. It seems that Kinbote's perception of the present (during Shade's hospitalization for example) is projected into the past (the Zemblan revolution). Possibly because he was "born" when Shade was 14 or 15, his perception of time is distorted into a kind of fugue. Nabokov may have been aware that the periods when an alternate personality emerges into consciousness used to be called a "fugue state," experienced by the dominant personality as a blackout.
Carolyn
Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html>
Contact the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm>
View Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm>